The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Online content distributors offer a variety of media content items to consumers, ranging anywhere from user-uploaded media clips, which anyone with an Internet connection and a suitable device may freely access, to high-quality, subscription-level television shows and movies. A content distributor may distribute media content items produced by other entities, referred to herein as content providers or content publishers. When a content provider is ready for the content distributor to distribute a media content item produced by the content provider, the content provider will typically send the media content item to the content distributor. For instance, if the content item is a video, the content provider may send a video file to the content distributor. A video file may already be properly formatted and optimally compressed for distribution by the distributor before being sent to the content distributor, or the content distributor may process the video file to generate suitably formatted video data prior to distributing the media content item.
Metadata for the media content items may facilitate various distribution processes, such as categorizing and sorting the content items. For example, content distributors may index or modify content based on metadata before it reaches the viewer. Additional associated metadata for content may be generated or retrieved after receiving the content, whether to supplement or substitute existing metadata. Certain categories of descriptive metadata corresponding with video information, such as video title, actors, release year, genre, etc., may be presented alongside content items in various content distribution interfaces, such as menus, directory listings, search interfaces, program guides, and so forth. Furthermore, certain viewer actions taken while a content item is playing may be recorded as well, which may enable the creation of tracking data and other metadata.